Daniel David Moses

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LINES UPON THE FLOW

Our paddles are deep in conversation with the river. Hear
how they enter it, each stroke questioning the current? And hear
how the stream replies with an eddy or splash, syllables so

obscure, who can be sure they’re adding at all to what’s been thought
about night? Neither you or I can tell by a push, a pull
in the thick of dark, in the dark of the flow, its quickness or

direction. Will putting up paddles, letting silences come,
move us out beyond discussion, beyond what carries us
along? Will we come to some conclusion in the current? But

some other tongue slips through on an old and liquid idea
and off into song. And we would join in, sing along if we
could, if only we knew the tune or some words in the language.

How the river mocks our desire, breaks up in bubbles of

laughter in our wake, won’t ever take us seriously, as long

as we mistake talk for speaking in tongues. Tongues of light, it
says,

tongues both dumb and bright. The ones, it whispers, that push
upriver

through the sounding dark into a night so clear, you're afloat light
years out in space right here along the shore, the moon in your
throats.

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